Black Horizon (20 page)

She went stingy on the shampoo, knowing that it would have taken a good twenty minutes of this drizzle to rinse out a full lather. At least the water was hot. She closed her eyes and let soapy rivulets run down her face and body.

Bianca knew there was something her lawyer wasn’t telling her. Something important. A meeting tomorrow morning was a good idea. It would be her chance to ask the right questions and push Jack for real answers. She liked Jack. He meant well. She knew he wasn’t trying to freak her out, but she needed to lay down some rules. First among them: never, ever color the most important part of a conversation with
“I don’t mean to scare you but . . .”

Bianca froze. She heard a noise.

Just the pipes
, she told herself.

She heard it again. Definitely not the familiar rumble of mobile-home plumbing. It sounded like the front door. She turned off the water, peeled back the edge of the shower curtain, and listened.

“Carolina, is that you?”

Her roommate worked the four-to-midnight shift at Sloppy Joe’s. It would have been odd for her to come home at this hour, even on a normal Monday, and with the media and cleanup crews flooding into Key West for the oil spill, no way would her boss have sent her home early.

Bianca stood silent, dripping wet, waiting for a reply. There was none. The trailer carried sound like a tin can, even noises as far away as the front door. She was pretty sure that she’d heard something. She had
definitely
heard something.

Stop it. Stop scaring the crap out of yourself.

She checked her hair for residue. Getting out all the shampoo was impossible with this water pressure, but it would have to do. She toweled off, wrapped her hair in a makeshift turban, and stepped from the shower. Her robe was on a hook beside the foggy mirror. She slipped it on and started toward the bathroom door. The fan was broken, and the window didn’t open, so she needed to open the door a crack, just enough to clear some of the shower steam. But as she reached for the knob, something made her stop. Again, she listened.

Not a sound on the other side of the door.

“Carolina?” she said, keeping the door closed.

More silence. An uneasy silence. The decrepit old trailer was never
that
quiet. Something didn’t feel right, and she wasn’t sure what to do about it, but Jack’s words were suddenly replaying in her head:

“Don’t be afraid to call me or Theo anytime, for any reason.”

She checked the tray by the sink, where she kept her makeup and phone charger. Her phone wasn’t there. She’d left it on the dresser in the bedroom.

“Damn it!”

Tears came, and she suddenly found herself sitting on the bathroom floor, knees drawn up to her chin, arms wrapped tightly around her shins. For five days she’d pretended that a lawsuit could give her a reason to get up in the morning, could help her make sense of what had happened to Rafael. Now, afraid to open the bathroom door, unable to get up off the floor, crying seemed like the only thing to do.

Get up and get your phone. Now.

Bianca drew a breath, wiped her tears into her terrycloth sleeve, and pushed herself up from the cold linoleum. Her hand was shaking as she reached for the knob, but she took a deep breath and opened the door.

It slammed open, knocking her backward, and the rest was a blur. A man wearing a rubber Halloween mask pushed his way on top of her. In a split second she was turned around, facedown on the linoleum. Her attacker was sitting on her kidneys, his huge hand covering her mouth before she could scream.

“Don’t fight.”

He was speaking Spanish, but it was thick and slurred. It made her think of the way Jack had described his attacker:
Like he had cotton in his mouth.

“Don’t hurt me,” she said. She was pinned beneath him, unable to move. Fighting was not an option. The hand over her mouth and the crushing weight of his rock-solid body in the small of her back made it difficult just to breathe.

“I’m going to take my hand away now,” he said, still speaking Spanish. “Scream and you die. Look into my eyes and you die. Understand?”

A part of her wanted to die, the part that dreaded what was about to happen, but she was too frightened to resist. She nodded.

His hand slipped away from her mouth. “I have something for you,” he said.

Bianca cringed, and the sound she uttered was completely involuntary.

“Quiet!”

Bianca struggled to get control of her herself. She prayed for her roommate to walk through the front door, home early from work, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. She prayed for strength.

“I thought you’d want these,” the man said.

Her head was cocked sideways, her right cheek pressed to the linoleum, and a stack of papers suddenly landed just a few inches away from the tip of her nose.

He grabbed her by the wet hair, lifting her head up from the floor. “Read.”

The light was still on, but it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. Slowly, the handwriting came into focus. She recognized it, and she didn’t have to read beyond the salutation to realize what she was seeing.

Querida Josefina
, it read. Dear Josefina.

“Your lawyer left these in Cuba,” he said. “I want you to give them to him.”

It was all too bizarre, and Bianca was barely able to comprehend. She had no doubt that these were the missing letters from Rafael, and she could only assume that this man was the thief Jack had told her about. But she had no idea how or why he had come all the way from Cuba to give the letters to her.

“Will you do that for me, Bianca?”

She hesitated—not out of resistance, but because she was trying to make sense of it.

He jerked her head back harder, yanking on her hair.
“Will you?”

She nodded quickly.

“Good,” he said, pushing her face into the floor.

She lay still, hoping it was over. Hope evaporated as she felt him lean forward, felt his breath on the back of her neck.

“I have something else for you,” he said in a harsh whisper, chilled by the thickness of his words from the cotton or whatever it was in his mouth.

His hand was suddenly right in front of her face. He cocked his thumb and a six-inch blade popped from his fist. The shiny steel switchblade glistened in the bathroom light. Slowly, it came toward her. Bianca closed her eyes tightly, bracing herself. She felt the pointed tip of the blade on her upper lip. She tried to pull away, but his left hand held her head in place, pressed to the floor. It felt like a needle puncturing her lip, more terrifying than painful. A trickle of blood entered her mouth, warm and salty.

“Taste it,” he whispered, breathing onto the back of her neck. “Taste the blood of a Cuban whore.”

Chapter 31

O
n Wednesday, Jack went for a morning run along the waterfront. He didn’t get far.

Oil.

It was coming ashore. Not in quantities large enough for Jack to see birds floundering and beaches blackened. But to the south, toward Truman Annex, disaster relief was under way. Cleanup crews were moving into position, ready to rake and scrub the shoreline, workers on the frontline wearing protective hazmat suits. Coast Guard vessels and volunteer shrimp boats tended to the offshore booms and skimmers. Helicopters—both media and relief teams—buzzed overhead to assess the impact.

Jack stopped at the police barricade.

“Beach is closed,” the cop told him.

“How bad is it?”

“Not as bad as it will be. Much worse on Ballast Key.”

Ballast was privately owned, the
real
“southernmost point” in the continental United States.

Onlookers continued to gather at the barricade, some squeezing in beside him, others pushing forward from behind. Oil was the star, and anyone with a smartphone was the paparazzi. An old woman beside Jack was holding back tears. “Never thought I’d live to see this,” she said in a voice that quaked. “And this is what they call a glancing blow.”

“That’s what I heard, too,” said Jack. “It’s headed more toward the middle keys.”

“I grew up snorkeling in Marathon. Say good-bye for good to Pickle Reef, Alligator Reef. All of it.”

The cop urged everyone to go home, but few listened.

Jack’s cell rang. It was Rick, Bianca’s boss. Jack stepped away from the barricade and found a quiet spot beneath a palm tree.

“Don’t mean to stick my nose where it don’t belong,” said Rick, “but did everything go okay at the court hearing yesterday?”

“Fine,” said Jack, seeing no need to say more.

“I only ask because Bianca didn’t show up for work last night.”

“She didn’t?”

“Nope. Didn’t answer her cell, either.”

Jack was getting concerned. “Have you tried her this morning?”

“I just did. Still no answer. I was hoping that she was having a meeting with you or something.”

His concern was turning to worry. He checked his watch. A little after eight. “Actually, we were supposed to meet for breakfast at nine-thirty. Let me call her.”

Jack hung up and speed-dialed Bianca. No answer. He tucked his iPhone back into the arm clip, thinking.
Missed work. Didn’t answer her cell.
If not for what had just happened to him in Cuba, Jack might have blown it off as no big deal, just a confused young woman in need of some time to herself. But his own advice to his client was coming back to him:
We all need to be a little more careful.

Jack hurried to the sidewalk and ran two blocks back to his hotel. The taxi stand at the valet was without taxis. Jack asked the attendant to call one, but the guy made a face, as if Jack were visiting from another planet.

“Streets are closed. Emergency vehicles only.”

Jack plugged Bianca’s address into his iPhone. Mastic Mobile Home Park was less than a half mile to the north, and the map showed him the way. It was an easy run up mostly residential streets. As Jack drew closer, he ran with a growing sense of urgency, flying past a bank, the Ocean Breeze Inn. His heart was pounding as he reached the entrance to the mobile home park. His GPS wasn’t precise enough to lead him to Bianca’s front door. The lot numbers, hand painted on conch shells and fish-shaped mailboxes, guided him in the right direction. He knocked on her front door.

No one answered. He dialed her cell again, but it went to her voice mail. He knocked harder on the metal door.

It opened. A young woman wiped sleep from her eyes.

“Are you Bianca’s roommate?”

“Yeah,” she said, grumbling. “Who are you?”

“Jack, her lawyer. Is she here?”

“No idea. I assume she is. I got home at three and went straight to sleep, until you woke me up.”

“Can you check?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. I’m sorry to trouble you, but it’s important that I talk to her, and she’s not answering her phone.”

She breathed a heavy sigh, as if Jack had just asked her to singlehandedly clean up the oil spill. “Okay, I’ll check.”

Jack waited outside the open door—until he heard the scream.

Jack raced inside and through the trailer’s tiny living room. Bianca’s roommate was standing in the narrow hallway outside Bianca’s bathroom. One hand covered her mouth. With the other, she pointed. Jack stopped in the doorway and looked inside the bathroom.

No Bianca, but something was smeared across the mirror over the sink.

“Is that blood?” she asked.

Jack ran to Bianca’s bedroom. “Bianca!”

He checked inside the closet, beneath the covers, under the bed. Still no Bianca. He rushed back to the bathroom. Bianca’s roommate was still in the hallway, but as far away from the bathroom as she could stand, her back pressed to the wall, her whole body shaking.

“Please don’t tell me that’s blood.”

Cautiously, Jack entered the bathroom and stepped closer to the mirror. It wasn’t a splatter or random smear. It was a message—written in blood. Just two words:

DROP IT.

“Drop what?” she asked.

Jack dialed 911. “The case,” he said.

Chapter 32

J
ack knocked on one trailer door after another.

Not a single one of Bianca’s neighbors had seen or heard anything. By the time the first responder arrived from the sheriff’s department, Jack had hit every mobile home in the entire park, and he’d rounded up a dozen volunteers to help search for clues of any nature. The most important thing, he kept telling himself, was to move fast and remain determined to find Bianca alive.

“Are you the person who called nine-one-one?” the deputy asked.

Jack confirmed that he was. Two more squad cars pulled up. The first responder debriefed Jack quickly, and two deputies went inside. A ring of yellow police tape encircled the lot, and a third deputy escorted Jack outside the perimeter, where he took Jack’s formal statement. In five minutes, Bianca’s trailer and the area around it was an active crime scene. The main gravel road through the park was blocked off by squad cars from the Monroe County Sherriff’s Department, orange and yellow beacons swirling. Uniformed deputies, crime-scene investigators, and a pair of seasoned detectives were entering and leaving at the direction of the deputy posted at the perimeter.

Jack spotted Bianca’s boss rushing toward him. He had a stack of papers with him. Rick’s Key West Café kept photo IDs on file for all its employees, and Jack had asked Rick to print flyers with Bianca’s picture.

“How’s this?” asked Rick, breathing heavily from the run.

“Perfect,” said Jack. “Keep making color copies all morning. Get as many people as you can to pass them out all over town.”

“You got it.”

“And let’s get it going viral on Facebook and whatever social media we can. Bianca’s roommate should be able to help with that.”

“I know some Facebook junkies, too,” said Rick.

A media van pulled up, and Jack seized the opportunity. He took a flyer from Rick and went straight to the reporter and her cameraman.

“Her name is Bianca Lopez and she’s gone missing,” said Jack. “We need help getting her photo on the air as quickly as possible.”